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What is Fascism? Some General Ideological Features

I am skeptical of efforts to produce a "definition" of
fascism. As a dynamic historical current, fascism has taken many different
forms, and has evolved dramatically in some ways. To understand what
fascism has encompassed as a movement and a system of rule, we have
to look at its historical context and development--as a form of counter-revolutionary
politics that first arose in early twentieth-century Europe in response
to rapid social upheaval, the devastation of World War I, and the Bolshevik
Revolution. The following paragraphs are intented as an initial, open-ended
sketch.

Fascism is a form of extreme right-wing ideology that celebrates the
nation or the race as an organic community transcending all other loyalties.
It emphasizes a myth of national or racial rebirth after a period of
decline or destruction. To this end, fascism calls for a "spiritual
revolution" against signs of moral decay such as individualism and
materialism, and seeks to purge "alien" forces and groups that
threaten the organic community. Fascism tends to celebrate masculinity,
youth, mystical unity, and the regenerative power of violence. Often,
but not always, it promotes racial superiority doctrines, ethnic persecution,
imperialist expansion, and genocide. At the same time, fascists may embrace
a form of internationalism based on either racial or ideological solidarity
across national boundaries. Usually fascism espouses open male supremacy,
though sometimes it may also promote female solidarity and new opportunities
for women of the privileged nation or race.

Fascism's approach to politics is both populist--in that it seeks to
activate "the people" as a whole against perceived oppressors
or enemies--and elitist--in that it treats the people's will as embodied
in a select group, or often one supreme leader, from whom authority proceeds
downward. Fascism seeks to organize a cadre-led mass movement in a drive
to seize state power. It seeks to forcibly subordinate all spheres of
society to its ideological vision of organic community, usually through
a totalitarian state. Both as a movement and a regime, fascism uses mass
organizations as a system of integration and control, and uses organized
violence to suppress opposition, although the scale of violence varies
widely.

Fascism is hostile to Marxism, liberalism, and conservatism, yet it
borrows concepts and practices from all three. Fascism rejects the principles
of class struggle and workers' internationalism as threats to national
or racial unity, yet it often exploits real grievances against capitalists
and landowners through ethnic scapegoating or radical-sounding conspiracy
theories. Fascism rejects the liberal doctrines of individual autonomy
and rights, political pluralism, and representative government, yet it
advocates broad popular participation in politics and may use parliamentary
channels in its drive to power. Its vision of a "new order" clashes
with the conservative attachment to tradition-based institutions and
hierarchies, yet fascism often romanticizes the past as inspiration for
national rebirth.

Fascism has a complex relationship with established elites and the non-fascist
right. It is never a mere puppet of the ruling class, but an autonomous
movement with its own social base. In practice, fascism defends capitalism
against instability and the left, but also pursues an agenda that sometimes
clashes with capitalist interests in significant ways. There has been
much cooperation, competition, and interaction between fascism and other
sections of the right, producing various hybrid movements and regimes.